Ys
by Mikomi's Pen
Summary: There's a city that stands at the intersection of her past and her future. AU, gen, plotty, o lord.
1. Apres Moi

NOTES: OH GOD IT'S A PLOTFIC. GET IN THE CAR.

**"Ys"**

_i. Aprés Moi..._

She remembered the feeling of cold water sucking at her ankles. She remembered the rain. She'd forgotten a lot of things in her long life, but she remembered that much.

Sometimes she'd wade out into the water to her knees and bend over, resting her hands on the unsteady surface that licked at her, stuck to her and fell back. She wondered if it might not climb higher and wrap around and pull her under. If it did - what if she didn't make it? She would hold her breath as long as she was able, but finally her jaws would drop apart and she'd inhale powerfully so that it didn't take her long to die. Again she would live, and then she'd breathe in again, and she would quickly die, again and again, head aching and dizzy as each expression of mortality twisted and shaped her until finally, that last time, she would open her mouth and breathe normally and find herself a fish, transfigured by the pressure and heat of the ocean waters.

Maybe.

* * *

She remembered fire on her skin. She remembered the way the tiny hairs on her arms would be the first to curl and fall away. She remembered how it would hurt for only a little while before she became intoxicated on the smoke. She remembered the day when early physicists came to understand the properties of air flow and remedied that problem.

* * *

She remembered waking up to see a bird in her window. As she'd blinked heavy, wet eyes and wondered where she was, it had looked at her, opened its beak, let out a brief trill of song and waited for her reaction. When it was satisfied, it spread its wings and flew away, and she followed it to look out on the twisting alleys and bright spires and glittering windows of the sun-dappled city by the sea.

* * *

She remembered the feeling of a hand on her brow.

* * *

She remembered the prickle of champagne on her lips. She remembered the way it warmed her throat, not unbearably - warmed her in the way a hand warms a hand. She remembered serving it, once, her head lowered beneath her hands, biting her lip, not daring to squeeze her eyes shut. She remembered wandering the fields of Champagne and crushing the tart grapes between her teeth, the earth rough and wet beneath her bare feet.

Every bit of memory lay within her, too voluminous to fit inside her modest mind; they crowded instead outwards, tucking into the spaces beneath her fingernails and the bumps on her tongue, pressing outwards to the tips of her eyelashes, giving her form and shape and strength and making her a girl built, layer upon layer, with color and hooded eyes and a contemptuous smile twisting her lips.

"Champagne?" she asked, memories that formed her throat giving her voice a contemptuous curl. "Poor choice, Head of Catering."

"Master of Ceremonies!" bawled Tamaki Shinichiro. (She didn't like that the memory of him and his name also gave her form, but she supposed that there had to be memories to give her sphincter shape, too.)

"Expensive, pretentious, inappropriate, and of poor quality. Rather like you...How much did you pay for each bottle?" she continued, cutting him off before he realized what she'd said and started shouting again.

"Uh..."

"Please," she said, "feel free to subtract the graft from the final price."

Strange man didn't even bother to try to deny that, simply doing the math on his fingers. "Six thousand yen? I guess? Hey!" he shouted when she dumped the last of her glass out on the ground. "That's still good!"

"You need better men," she informed Lelouch.

"My followers are uniformly competent," he replied absently, then inclined his head in the direction of Tamaki. "Oh, you mean him," he said. "Yes, he's useless."

"Good." She smiled and curved a hand around the crook of his elbow. "I feared that your victory might have made you kind. Blind to your fellows' shortcomings. Soft."

"Hardly," he said, with such significance that she raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to the side. He looked at her, and she wondered what his expression was beneath the mask - was he smiling, or was he in dread?

They were interrupted by Kallen. "Zero," she said, breathless, a little flushed, a bit drunk. "I'd like to say, if - "

Kallen, in turn, was interrupted by Tamaki. "Zero!" he bellowed, causing everyone in the room to turn to look at him. "Try this champagne. That whor...ho...ho..." He tried for a long time to think of a homonym to "whore" and eventually just smacked his lips in surrender and said, " - _whore_ thinks it's bad, but I know you have good taste."

"Tamaki," Kallen hissed.

"C'mon," he urged, pouring a glass, oblivious to the sudden awkward silence that had settled over the room. C.C. leaned down to rest her elbows on Lelouch's armrest and her chin on her fists and watched them all and smiled.

"You will not be sorry," he said, filling the flute up almost to the top. "It's really, um..." He looked up at Lelouch and that mask and squinted, tilting his head this way and that, until finally he said, "Oh" and shook his head. "Well, uh...I guess you could..." He made a motion like tipping a mask back very slightly and cramming a champagne flute under the gap.

"There's a solution," C.C. snickered.

"Well..." said Tamaki.

"You should keep this one around," she cooed to Lelouch.

Tamaki flushed at her reaction and (unwisely) took his anger out on the first person he saw. "Or maybe you could take the stupid thing off!" he spat. "I mean, we've won, is it just to make you look cool?"

Lelouch didn't react to that and he didn't react to the identical expression fifty people make when the oxygen suddenly disappears from the room. Instead, he simply looked away from Tamaki and said, "Toudou."

"Yes." Toudou stepped forward, spared a moment to glance contemptuously at Tamaki, and then looked back at Zero.

"Have we won?" Zero asked his general. "Do you think?"

"For today, we've won," he said cautiously.

"For today," Lelouch agreed. "For tomorrow?"

"No," he said, and glanced backwards at Chiba, who nodded.

"Diethard? Have we won?"

"I should hope not," Diethard laughed. "That aside, even tonight I can't pretend there won't be repercussions."

"Well said. Japan, tonight, is Japan," Lelouch said, standing grandly but with such suddenness that his shoulder clipped C.C.'s nose. He glanced backwards slightly but didn't apologize. "So tonight, we celebrate our nation. But tomorrow these shores may no longer be ours. Tomorrow we may be stronger than before. Who knows? There's work yet to be done. So, Tamaki - " Lelouch looked at him, all dignity. "You'll forgive me if I wear this mask a little longer, I hope."

"Uh, yeah," was Tamaki's grand response. C.C. rolled her eyes. Lelouch seemed nonplussed: it hadn't been a bad speech, after all, and Lelouch got pouty when even the least of his speeches didn't leave them screaming his name.

"Perhaps we should retire," C.C. murmured into his ear, not eager to have to sit through this party with the only person worth talking to silent and sulking.

"Very well," Lelouch said, and rose, nodding at them all as he went. C.C. lingered long enough to hear Kallen mutter "Well done" and Tamaki respond "Ow."

Lelouch had taken over the Headmaster's office as his own private quarters, disabled the surveillance cameras and drawn the blinds. Now, with a sigh, he took off his mask with his eyes closed and then sat there a while, his face deeply etched with weariness.

"It's a relief, isn't it, that you had the mask to fall back on." He didn't respond, so C.C. leaned in a little further and explained, "It would be awkward to have to explain that you're not old enough to drink."

"So that's where you were going with that," he said, rubbing at his eyes.

"Tired?"

He paused in his ministrations to cock an eyebrow at her.

"And how many more miles are there to go before we sleep?"

Lelouch sighed and leaned forward in his chair to lace his hands before him. "Schneizel," he bit out. C.C. shouldn't have been surprised. There was hardly a moment in which he wasn't thinking about the past and the future, even surrounded by friends, even at a party. Really, the only time she'd seen him live in the present was during a battle. "He's canny prey. More so than Cornelia, even. I imagine he'll look at the incident with..."

Lelouch was silent a long moment.

"With Euphemia and draw conclusions," he finally finished, clear-voiced. "Simply requesting a face-to-face meeting is out of the question now. We'll have to come at it from an angle, draw him in."

"It sounds like you have a plan."

"The foundations of one, in any case," Lelouch said, sitting up. "Schneizel's mother is French, and it's a shame he's never quite recovered from - in more than one sense. It's the reason he's the second prince and no better. It's the reason he has such a powerful grudge against the E.U.

"Now, it was a terrible blow to Britannia when she lost the Isles," he continued, tracing maps with the trail of his fingers in the glassy surface of the desk before him. "She plays disdainful, but she'd do anything to recapture that postage-stamp kingdom. Schneizel knows that. If he thought for a moment that the Isles were in play..."

"He'd come running to the E.U., eager for a bit of glory."

Lelouch laughed, disdainful with a weaker inner curve. "Schneizel? Eager?" He settled back, his hands folded before him. "_Calculating_ the glory to be had, perhaps."

"All right," laughed C.C., even though she didn't find the situation particularly funny. "And how will you bring them into play?"

"It's a question."

"And how will you corner him?"

Lelouch's lips jerked powerfully downwards. "It's another question."

"And," she said, "why bother, when we're perfectly able to defend ourselves here?"

This time his face jerked powerfully upwards. There was a deep anger there that surprised even C.C., accustomed though she was to Lelouch's moodiness. As she knew the answer to that question, she didn't demand that Lelouch say it out loud, instead tilting her head to the side and smiling and saying, "Sometimes, when you hold onto two diverging paths, you're torn apart. Are you willing to suffer that fate?"

"Are you willing to mind your own business?" said Lelouch snittily, at that moment such the little boy that she couldn't help but laugh. He flushed at her reaction, and looked away, and so he wasn't ready when she asked,

"And when are you going to see Nunnally?"

He stole a glance up at her, and then looked away, his mouth shut.

"And when you do, will it be as Zero or as Lelouch?"

* * *

Shinozaki Sayoko's proudest day was the day upon which she inherited the techniques of the Shinozaki School. She hadn't known it was coming. The Master her grandfather had simply called her in, her father and uncle kneeling beside him, and had announced that she was to take his place when he died.

Her second proudest day was when she, for the first time, cooked a perfect chocolate souffle.

Her third proudest day was when Zero called her to come and see him and asked her to protect his younger sister. She said, "I did not know that Zero-sama had a younger sister," perhaps a little coyly because she'd understood the moment that he asked her that. Still, Zero had that flair for dramatics, and she understood that, too, so she waited patiently as he took off his mask and stared her gravely in the eyes.

"This truly is my proudest day," she said, which (as previously mentioned) wasn't the complete truth, but her Master had made it repeatedly clear that it was okay to lie. For example, he'd also told her older cousin that _he_ was going to inherit the Shinozaki School, and everyone knew how that had turned out. "I'm happy to have served you, Master Lelouch, and I'm happy to serve you now."

"And I'm happy to have your service," Lelouch said solemnly.

She was also happy that he was there to show the world that people like him, with his predilections, were also capable of making valuable contributions to society. And she was also happy that she finally understood why Zero dressed so _strangely._

"I trusted you always, of course," said Sayoko. "You, as Lelouch. But I never suspected that you would have this kindness, this..."

"Thank you," said Lelouch with this funny little expression he always made when he was horribly embarrassed. And what Sayoko had just said - that really hadn't been a lie. She really had liked Lelouch. He always treated her and her nation with respect, even when his classmates and even his friends had treated her with contempt. He hadn't had the arrogance that normally would have come with his position and especially his background. But he was still a Britannian, still an interloper - he still lived in luxury, lived freely, when her countrymen were made slaves. So she liked him more now.

And it was good to know he was still a person, that he still did that funny little thing with his face.

"You're the most competent person I know," he continued, steepling his fingers. "You're trustworthy. You know Nunnally. I'll assign security - "

"There will be no need, Lelouch-sama," she assured him. "I've been honored with the title of thirty-seventh successor to the Shinozaki school of martial arts. I will be able to protect Nunnally-sama myself."

There was a moment when Lelouch just stared. Then he took in a breath and asked, "Why were you working as a - ?" Then he shook his head. "I suppose this is the proverbial gift horse. All right. I would be - grateful - "

"And I would be honored," Sayoko responded smoothly. "Will you require my services immediately?"

"Not immediately," said Lelouch. "The situation here still needs to be settled. But after that..."

"I see."

"And until then, I still need you to look after her. A bit."

Sayoko raised her chin. "You won't be able to do so yourself?"

Lelouch's face was troubled as he echoed himself: "Just a bit." She looked him over in that special way all the Shinozakis learned, the way that seemed so casual and unassuming. Of course, that was rather lost on Lelouch, who looked so introspective that he probably wouldn't notice if she pulled faces at him.

"In any case," he finally said, drawing himself up. "It's a very important task, for reasons you will of course understand. Are you confident in your abilities?"

"I am."

He nodded and said, "Thank you," a clear dismissal. However, as she turned to go, he spoke again.

"Do you know when the preliminary list of the dead...?"

She looked over her shoulder at him. There was nothing at all readable in his handsome, young face, aside from the fact that it was so young. "I know that Mr. Reid has been hard at work collecting the names. Within the next few hours, I think. Would you like to see it?"

"As soon as it's finished," he said. Sayoko took a moment to pity him. He was so very young, and already he had this on his conscience. Already, he had those deaths on his hands, all because he chose to trust when he shouldn't have trusted at all. She hoped someday he would be able to forget it, be able to forgive himself. They needed him yet. Besides, she liked him.

"Thank you, Sayoko," he said, and she went.

* * *

Twelve thousand six hundred seven were dead, and six thousand seven hundred sixty five injured. The rest were still unaccounted for - unidentified or missing. There were more names yet to come.

He had some difficulty locating her name. The font was small, and there were so many names there, and furthermore whoever had compiled the list was clearly a staunch anti-royalist, lumping her in with the rest of humanity, stripping her of her royal name and simply assigning her the name she'd have had if she hadn't been born a princess. But, in time, he found her, nestled between Kyubei Masayuki and Michael Longfellow:

_Euphemia Lennox._

The only comfort was that she didn't lie near Kururugi Suzaku. But that was the only comfort and a small one. There was something incredibly cruel about that name that sounded flowery spoken and looked flowery writ. There was something terrible about the smallness of those letters. There was something about them that struck him like a blow and sent him rocking back in his chair, looking at the ceiling for a very long time.

It was a woman's voice that gave him the presence of mind to wonder what time it was. "Zero? May I come in?"

He looked at the door and honestly considered saying _no _before he finally reached up, touched his mask carefully, and then called, "Come in." Even with that permission, Kallen hesitated, gradually pushing open the door before slowly peering inside. He thought for one absurd moment of calling out to her, saying "I'm decent," but that would have made him sound silly and have such a tragic ring of falsehood besides.

"Is there something you need?" he asked her.

She stood before him now. She was a strange creature, Kozuki Kallen, and he wondered if he would ever be able to reconcile her. Out of all his Knights, she was the only one who really quickened his breath, made his heart beat - made him nervous. It was more than the fact that she was the only one who knew both sides of him, both Lelouch and Zero. It was her passion, her idealism...It was the fact that he didn't understand her.

Like now. She was coming to him, not seventy-two hours after he killed twelve thousand six hundred seven of her countrymen and injured six thousand seven hundred sixty five - at the very least - and smiling at him, timidly, and saying, "I just would like to, um...thank you."

Normally he was a bit more tolerant of foolishness. Now, he tossed his head and said, "It wasn't for you that I did it."

That timid smile fell away and turned into a tentative scowl. "I know that. That wasn't what I was saying."

"Then what?"

"That you did an astounding job. That's all." The scowl turned a bit deeper as she jerked her shoulders in a shrug. "That I thought you were heroic."

He responded to that in the only way a sane man could: by laughing uproariously. Kallen flushed in response, looked at the ground, and gritted out, "All right. Fine, then. I sound stupid, I know that. But the fact remains that you've returned our country to us, and I thought some sort of recognition of that was in order."

His laughter faded merely into a widely amused smile she couldn't even see. "Kozuki, you don't thank the devil for holding up his end of the bargain."

Her eyes narrowed warily, but even so she tossed off, "I do. It's only good manners." Then she cocked her head to the side and said, "If it's a deal with the devil, what's the price?"

"Ah, if I told you now, it would ruin the suspense, wouldn't it? I assure you, though, it will be quite dear."

And he thought that was enough. But her eyes flicked downwards to the list before him, then back up to where his face would be and then at the list again, and that wariness, that mistrust, faded into sympathy, God damn her.

"I guess so," she agreed softly. He couldn't believe that she was actually looking sympathetic towards him. He wanted right then to scoff at her, inform her that she misunderstood, laugh at that misunderstanding - but not with that list beneath his hands. He couldn't do it, not with that list.

"Is that all?" he asked instead.

"Yeah. Unless, um - you're lone...you want someone to talk...Uh - " She jerked backwards and flushed. "Never mind. No. That's it. God. I - That's it," she said again, more firmly, and turned to flee the room. Even so, he noted, she hesitated just a moment at the door, as though hoping he'd call her back.

He didn't.

He just wondered: How could he ever face Nunnally?

* * *

He faced her, in the end, half as Zero - the mask removed and tucked under his arm, still wearing his suit. He came into their home, the home he hadn't seen in so long, and looked at her.

She'd turned her face towards the door, waiting for him to speak. She looked exhausted. Her eyes were red, her face a little swollen. Lelouch swallowed.

"Nunnally," he finally said, his voice halfway to Zero's, hoping she would draw her own conclusions. She did:

Her lips dropped apart, and then pressed closed again, and with a tight, sorrowful expression she spread her arms. He dropped the mask, ran to her, embraced her; and she held onto him tightly, buried her face in the crook of his neck, and murmured, again and again, "Onii-sama, onii-sama."

* * *

(She remembered the flood. And she remembered that city by the sea.)

"I'll tell it as I best know how,  
And that's the way it was told to me:  
Must have once been a thief or a whore  
Then surely was thrown overboard,  
Where, they say,  
I came this way from the deep blue sea."


	2. Gambit

**"Ys"**

_ii. Gambit_

Donato Garcia Galeano was fired at three twenty-one in the afternoon.

He wasn't a bad worker. He wasn't an especially good one, with a slight tendency to stay out late and come in late, and also sometimes hung over, and also he'd sometimes ignore work in favor of sketching on his legal pad. He was an artist by passion, a paralegal only by habit, so he had other things on his mind, but he had a good WPM average and a good memory. He wasn't a bad worker.

It wasn't the quality of his work that was the issue, though: it was the company he kept. It was the coincidentally named Donna Galliano, assistant to the secretary to the Lieutenant Governor, a Britannian of Italian descent, who had long straight hair down to her hips and spoke with an eyebrow raised in permanent irony and who sang in a low throaty alto and took bites off his plate in the cafeteria, who was the issue.

"When you were hired here you agreed not to engage in a relationship with a co-worker," his supervisor said. This was, of course, bullshit. Yes, he'd signed that document, and he could even vaguely understand the motivation behind it. Still, Maria and Ronaldo, both in the secretarial pool, were engaged, and everyone knew about how the (married) secretary to the Lieutenant Governor was banging the (married) Lieutenant Governor, but nobody said a word.

"I think there might be other factors at play here," he said. "Possibly. _Potentially._ Like the fact you don't like it that a Number and a Britannian - "

"I don't _like_ anything," Anna said, which was comically accurate coming from her. "It's not me."

"Who is it, then?"

Anna looked at him with raised eyebrows.

"Tell me."

That expression turned into one of pinched annoyance. "And then what'll you do?" When he didn't answer, Anna sighed. "Lord save me from those with convictions. Are you in love with her?" Donato looked down with an uncomfortable shrug. "And her? Is she in love with you? Because you will be very sorry if she's not in love with you."

Normally, Donato would have hedged a bit. But the night before, Donna had kissed him on the eyelids and nestled in against him.

"I don't ever want to move from this spot," she'd murmured into his shoulder.

"So don't."

"I won't." She'd nuzzled him and murmured, "I'm going to freeze time. Watch me. And stay with you forever. Just watch."

So Donato said quietly to Anna, "I think so."

Anna pressed a hand to the bridge of her nose and said, "All right. Here's what we'll do, if you want to do this. It's going to be trouble as long as you're working here, and it'll still be trouble just a bit less trouble regardless, and she'll never make secretary, whatever, you'll regret it when you're older but now you'll be as happy as you can be. How old're you?"

"We're both twenty-two."

"You'll regret it when you're older. No matter. I'm going to fire you."

There was a feeling in Donato's chest like his lungs collapsing. "What?" he mumbled. "I, what - where will I go - "

"Oh my _God._ I don't _know._ You'll _find_ something. There are some people I know I can call. For God's sake, you should be thanking me, because I'm going to pull some strings and falsify some information to get you three months' severance pay so that you can find something." She looked at him a little while, then rolled her eyes and said, "You're welcome."

It was only after that she was already offended that Donato understood the full weight of what she was offering. "Oh, I, um. Oh. Thank you. I just - " He took a breath. "Thank you."

She shrugged self-consciously. "I married my sweetheart when I was your age. Everyone deserves an opportunity to be as miserable as I have for the past seventeen years."

So Donato Garcia Galeano was fired at three twenty-one in the afternoon with a broad smile splitting his face. By three thirty he'd collected all his things; at three thirty-two he called up to Donna's desk and got no answer and told the answering machine he'd just wait for her at home; and at three thirty-three he exited the Buenos Aires Britannian Imperial Government Building.

As he went, for some reason despite his love-drunk stupor he noticed the young man who walked past him. The boy might have been eighteen at the most. His clothes were heavy, especially for September, but otherwise he looked fine - clean-shaven, well-groomed. It was just this thing he did, this little gesture as Donato walked past him - a nervous tic of his wrist that twisted his hand in a circle and then snapped it back down towards his thigh. Donato looked at him. The boy just looked at the ground.

Donato walked on.

At three-thirty four, as Donato approached the guard station, the Buenos Aires Britannian Imperial Government Building exploded behind him. He knew the sound immediately for what it was, and the shockwave sent him to his knees, upended his box and scattered his possessions over the ground.

Slowly he turned to look at the wreckage. His lips were numb, but beneath his hands the ground was pebbly sharp. There was the smell of burning skin and hot iron and gasoline, and there were screams. As long as he knelt there, his face craned around to see that pyre, he thought of Anna, and he thought of Donna. He thought of Donna. He thought of Donna.

* * *

"Bother," sighed Odysseus. "Two this month and this month's hardly started. What did we think of Area 7, Guinivere?"

"Too muggy," Guinevere replied with a twist of her lip.

"Too muggy," Odysseus said. "Still, the poor damp bastards hardly deserved that." He made a sorrowful clucking noise with his mouth. "By God, what I wouldn't give for a proper war with proper soldiers in proper uniforms who shoot at each other properly. None of this skulking about in shadows. With dynamite. Perhaps I'm old-fashioned but it's simply not for me."

"It's beastly," Guinevere agreed languidly. "Those poor people. Never even knew they were on the front lines of a war."

"Terrible," Odysseus murmured. "A rude awakening indeed."

"And in Area 7 of all places," Guinevere sighed. "They love us there."

"Well," coughed Odysseus.

"Or near enough."

"Indeed, it's a terrible thing," Schneizel cut in softly. Both Guinevere and Odysseus fell silent at the sound of his voice, as they always did when he spoke. He smiled gently at them both, as he always did when they fell back to make way for him. "And it won't go away, I fear. It will only get worse."

"Why?"

Perfectly self-evident though it was, Schneizel explained, "Zero."

"Oh," said Odysseus. He sounded almost dismissive. "Him."

Guinevere took issue with his tone. "Good Lord. Don't say it like that," she said.

"Like what?"

"Like he's beneath our notice. He killed Clovis, you know, and..." She trailed off. That he'd killed Euphemia was a truth all of them knew but none of them acknowledged. It was only with the cover that the Empire itself had punished Euphemia for her actions that they'd managed to suppress worldwide rebellions; any comment on this lie, particularly in potentially mixed company, was quite the faux pas.

(Schneizel frowned to think of Euphemia.)

"And God only knows what happened to Cornelia," Guinevere continued. "Dead or captured, I imagine. And at his hands."

"That knight, the one with the odd name - has he given up yet?" asked Odysseus.

"Guilford?" Schneizel said, then shook his head. "Not yet."

"Good on him, I say," said Odysseus. "We need more men with convictions. He won't find her, though, I don't think," he added thoughtfully. "Wild goose chase."

"Dead or captured," Guinevere said again.

There was silence a moment before Odysseus roused himself and said, "Well, this is a right depressing topic. What's past is past, you know, so. We need to look to the future."

"What's to be done about Zero?" said Guinevere.

Schneizel looked at her mildly. "Does something need to be done? Zero won the Battle of Tokyo, and won it stunningly. We haven't gained an inch of territory in three months. It would be best to leave him be, don't you think?"

"Don't be disingenuous; I don't think so and neither do you," Guinevere said. "Even if he stayed ensconced in the foulest den in Tokyo we would still have an obligation to hunt him down, just to prove to all the Numbers that they're not to follow in his footsteps."

"Strong words, Gwen," laughed Odysseus.

"Strong feelings, Odysseus," Guinevere replied. "I don't fancy watching the world dissolve into chaos."

"Right, you wouldn't want us to lose the colonies. You just built that house in - where was it - ?"

"That's not what I'm talking about. And Dubai City. What I'm talking about is that I don't like people killing each other."

"I'm afraid that people will always kill each other," Schneizel said, "but your protests against this very fact..."

"Moving," Odysseus snickered.

"Don't patronize me," Guinevere said sharply.

"I happen to agree with you, Guinevere," said Schneizel, which stopped Odysseus laughing. "We Britannians have an obligation to the world."

"You sound like my old tutor," murmured Odysseus cautiously.

"Perhaps I do," agreed Schneizel. "But I believe it. Forgive me for saying this but we're in the unique position of being able to bring peace to the world, and forgive me for thinking it but I think we should. There are people out there, we all know, like Zero, who would stand in the way of that, but the road to peace has never been an easy one. It wasn't for our forefathers, and it won't be for us. That doesn't mean we should give up." Schneizel smiled. "Hold me to the word I give now, Odysseus, Guinevere, I beg you: If I have to take up the sword personally against Zero for the sake of peace, I shall. I assure you."

His brother and sister nodded - her appreciatively, him knowingly. "You always were quite the blind idealist, weren't you, Schneizel," said Odysseus.

Schneizel laughed and spread his hands. "Like I said. I hope you both will forgive me it."

* * *

"Hey, Lelouch!"

Rivalz caught him by the arm as he was making his way home. Lelouch tensed and jerked his arm away before he could control himself. His mind had been on darker matters. When he said, "Yes?" it was more of a snarl, and Rivalz shrank back.

"I, um," he said. "No. Nothing." Then he laughed, waving Lelouch away. Then, when Lelouch turned to go once again: "Actually, something. Listen. My ma. She's been getting more insistent, you know..."

"Has she?" Lelouch asked neutrally.

"She just doesn't like it. I don't blame her. Though, I mean, I tell her all the time, it's safer here now with the El...Japanese in charge than it was with the Britannians, we both know that, they're not all freedom fighty anymore...But even so. She doesn't like it."

"It's understandable," said Lelouch.

"I know. She's got a point. But, I mean - Shirley's staying on."

"Is she?" God, in this place that held for her so much horror...

"And you, too, right?"

"Most likely. I do have obligations here."

"Ooh, you say that so impressive." Rivalz' laugh was false, and it quickly petered out. "Um. But I mean, you guys, and Kallen, too, if she ever quits with the whole, um, you know, uh, Black Knights thing and comes back to us. And the President, too. She might, you know. Start showing up again."

Milly acted the same as ever, and Milly hadn't graduated, but one day she'd just stopped coming to school.

"Sure, she might."

"And it's the finest education in the world. You know. Right here." A moment. "And I don't want to abandon you, too."

"Don't worry about me."

"I mean, who knows where Suzaku is now, and you need a guy friend around. Keep you from getting overwhelmed with those girls. Right?" Rivalz' expression was almost desperate.

Lelouch hesitated. What could he say? He knew he was a poor friend to Rivalz now. He was only still coming to Ashford to support his cover. He was tired, and he spoke rarely. Rivalz would probably be happier back in Britannia. And it would allow him to escape from this terrible, haunted place. In the end, Lelouch said nothing. Rivalz looked down.

"So I should stay," he said. "Right?"

Lelouch still had nothing to say.

"And - I mean - " Rivalz shrugged uncertainly. "There's also - It seems like there should be...someone here...to remember. You know." Quieter, "You know."

Lelouch knew. He looked away. "Listen, I should go - "

Rivalz' mouth snapped shut. "Yes! Of course. I'm sorry to keep you, you know - "

Lelouch knew, but even so he shrugged and turned away and said nothing as he left. He tried not to think about it. It was difficult when he had to walk past the place where Nina had died.

* * *

The taking of Ashford should have been bloodless. It should have been bloodless, and it was, until a point. The Britannians weren't stationed near that part of the city, and they'd been too occupied with the battle to rescue a school.

But then Nina had come out, armed with some terrible weapon, and one of his soldiers had responded in the only way a soldier responds to such things.

The others hadn't been there, but they'd been in the student council room with its clear unobstructed view, and all of them - save Nunnally, thank God save Nunnally - had seen. Milly had attacked the guards, as though trying to go save her friend, as though the bullet weren't lodged with commendable marksmanship in her head, as though it hadn't killed her instantly. Minami had pinned Milly to the ground and had had to hold her there. In the end she'd just exhausted herself.

He was glad he hadn't been there. He was glad he hadn't seen Nina die. He knew it made him a child, shaken by this death over the others just because he'd known her, and known her at best tangentially, just because he considered her a friend, even though (though she was delusional and misled) she'd taken up arms and could have killed so many. That soldier had done what he'd had to do, yet even so Lelouch hated him. Lelouch knew he should have been mourning the death of his soldiers, the death of the innocent, yet he was fixated on this death. He couldn't get her out of his mind.

There'd been one other incident. A Britannian had broken in somehow and shot Ougi, then fled. Ougi, after a three-month hospital stay, had largely recovered, and he was now resting a bit at home, and Lelouch was glad of that, but the incident was odd. He'd resolved to watch Ougi's activities.

"I'm home, Nunnally," Lelouch called.

"Welcome back, _onii-sama_," came the piping reply.

Here at home, they didn't talk about the war. He didn't know what she thought. There were times when he wanted to ask, but...But then he'd come home after a day of silence, and she'd be there with her smile and her embrace, and he couldn't. He'd remember what he was fighting for, and he'd remember too why he couldn't hear her condemn that.

"How was class today?"

"Quiet," he called back. The school didn't have even a tenth of the students it had before the battle. Zero had decreed that the United States of Japan were open to all people, even Britannians, even Britannians who had served in the colonial government. It had been Diethard, of all people, who had protested this the loudest, wanting perhaps to prove his distance from his former self, but Zero had insisted.

"This will be a country of renewal and forgiveness," he'd said, and the others had seemed leery (Kallen) at the least, angry (Diethard) at the worst, but in time they'd acclimated to the idea. Among the working and middle classes, a fair number of Britannians had stayed, but the wealthy (and, much to his frustration, the taxable) had fled.

"It'll be better when the school opens to the Japanese."

"Sure." Why would they want to learn at a school run by the people who'd oppressed them for so long? Japan wasn't composed of a hundred million iterations of Suzaku.

Perhaps that was unfair.

"Welcome back, Lelouch-sama." Sayoko had appeared suddenly - as was her wont - from God only knew where. "How was your test?"

"Fine. Thank you," he said as she took his coat.

"Did you say how your test was?" Nunnally called, and Lelouch raised his voice, laughing a little: "I said it was fine, Nunnally."

Sayoko caught his arm as he started to join Nunnally. He looked at her; she shot him a glance and murmured, "The E.U. will be gathering for a summit in a month's time."

Her smile was apologetic. Lelouch looked at her, and then swallowed and looked down at the ground and murmured, "Thank you." When he looked up again, she was gone, and his discomfort was momentarily displaced by curiosity over how exactly it was she did that.

"_Onii-sama,_" Nunnally greeted, stretching her hand out to Lelouch. He took it between both of his.

"And your day? How was it?" Lelouch asked, smiling at her. She responded to the warmth in his voice and smiled back.

"Terrible," she said sunnily. "A full hour and a half of French conjugation drills." Lelouch groaned on cue, and Nunnally giggled. "Every irregular verb you could think of."

"Beastly," Lelouch said.

"Terrible," she beamed again.

"An hour and a half?"

"A whole hour and a half!" she cried.

Lelouch hmmed. "Actually, what I meant was - _only_ an hour and a half?"

"What do you mean, only?"

"I mean what I mean, only. I think you need three hours of practice."

"No!" she gasped.

"'Non,' I think you mean to say," Lelouch corrected playfully.

"Non!" she agreed.

"Come on. Practice with me."

"You wouldn't."

"Oh I would, and I will. Come on. _Je ris, tu ris, il rit_..."

"Don't," Nunnally laughed.

"_Nous rions, vous riez, ils rient_ - "

"Stop it!"

"Would you prefer the subjunctive mood? We can do the subjunctive if you'd prefer. Come on. _Je rie_ - Come on. _Tu ries_ - "

"Stop it! Nooo, stop, don't make me do it!" she cried, hunching over and clutching herself in mock-agony, and in that moment she looked just like Euphemia.

The image struck Lelouch in the throat. It drove all laughter from him. He rocked back on his heels, the breath gone from his mouth, dizzy and nauseous. Slowly, Nunnally's smile slipped from her lips, and her brows drew together.

"What is it?" Lelouch opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn't find any words. All he could do was kneel there, next to her, as she inclined her face towards him, her face more and more worried.

"I just - um - remembered that I forgot to turn in an essay," he finally managed.

"Oh," said Nunnally, the worry still written across her face. "Well, do you need to go back...?"

"Um, I - " He cleared his throat. "Nunnally, I have to ask you something."

"What?" She gave an uncertain half-laugh.

"I...may have to go away. For a little while. Not very long, I promise," he begged as that concern deepened.

"Why?"

"It's, um...I just...You know that the Ashfords are leaving, and..."

"Even Milly?"

Lelouch hesitated. That was a whole different thing, a whole different topic. "I don't, um, know, to tell the truth. But it's, um - we sort of need to start thinking about...things."

"You want to get away from here."

Lelouch winced. This whole line of conversation wasn't precisely a lie, but it was close enough to make him uncomfortable. "In a way."

"Is it because of Euphemia?"

It was a question he was expecting. He still had to take a moment before he said, "In a way. Yes."

"I don't know about this." Her voice was sweet, but her face was approaching sternness.

"I won't be gone for long."

"I don't know about leaving." She worried at her bottom lip. "I think maybe it's our duty. To stay and remember - "

"We don't - we can't - have any sort of duty to the past. Do you understand?" Lelouch became aware he was speaking far too loudly, far too heatedly, but even so he continued on: "The very idea is absurd!"

Once that was out, and once Nunnally didn't react, he fell back weakly, spent by that fervor, and looked at the ground. Nunnally still said nothing at all.

"It'll only be a few weeks," he finally said, this time far too quietly.

A moment. "I guess we can talk about it over dinner."

"Sure." He stood and took Nunnally's hand again, then turned away and retreated.

"You heard the news from Sayoko?" C.C. asked lazily the moment the door had closed behind him.

"I heard," he said tersely, going over to the closet to hang up his school jacket, then crossing over to the sink to take out the lens that covered that stigma in his eye.

"All right," she sighed, and was quiet a while, picking at the crumbs on the dirty plate at her right hand. Then: "I much prefer this situation," she said, rolling onto her stomach. "Me not having to hide whenever she comes into the room...She actually treats me, as a high-ranking member of the Black Knights, as an honored guest." She lolled onto her back again. "It's charming."

"It sounds it."

"She asks me the strangest questions, though. 'Oh, are you the one who helps him with his clothes'? As though clothing like that could come from any hand but yours."

"Hm."

There was a moment, and then she turned over onto her stomach again. "For all that, though, I like her. She makes a good pizza, and in less time than it takes the delivery man to deliver. And she doesn't ask for a tip. I never tip," she added with a cruel little smile.

"Hm."

"I let him know that it's your money, and that I don't think you'd want me to give a tip. Besides, I don't want to spend freely. Like I said, it's your money." Another pause and a tiny, almost inaudible scoff. Then another moment before she asked, "Do you know how the pizza is in France?"

Lelouch looked at her. "Haven't you been there?"

A coy smile slipped across C.C.'s face, and she took her sweet time answering, tipping her head back and considering her answer carefully. "Not in a long time," she finally said.

"Well, don't ask me. I haven't been there in a while, either," Lelouch said, rather conscious that his definition of a _long time_ and hers diverged sharply.

"And you probably didn't have pizza, either." There was a deliberate pause. "Assuming Nunnally was with you." Lelouch turned to look at her, then looked away, and then looked back, and C.C. smiled, a superior smug triumphant little thing. "She doesn't want you to go?"

"It's complicated."

"You shouldn't let that stop you."

"It's complicated, I said, and I'm hardly going to look to _you_ for advice." Lelouch sat down irritably at his computer and opened an internet browser. "Besides," he muttered, "I know that there are times when I'll have to do something she doesn't like. For the sake of it all. I'm perfectly aware of that."

"You don't sound like you've accepted it."

He jerked his head in a shrug.

"My word," C.C. said, her voice twisted into a jeer, "you really do love her."

"I'm surprised you were able to recognize that," Lelouch snapped in response, then immediately winced and looked down. That had been so much harsher than he'd intended.

But C.C. didn't flinch. Instead, she just smiled faintly, rolled over onto her back and murmured, "That was cruel. You're enough to make a girl cry."

"I been here so long my heart is a parking lot,  
Hollow feet rooted to the spot.  
But the fields are beyond belief  
From tower out to where I can see -  
Language City don't mean a thing to me."


End file.
